Ella Turner lives between pink and blue. The film is a cyclothymic journey through colours and wavelengths, ranging from low moods with little energy, to feelings of exuberance and high energy.
Playing with observational documentary television and educational video styles, a narrator explains the science and history Ella can feel as she navigates the world. Turner is an exploration of selfhood and belonging, bringing light to our own relationship to intangibles. Like the film, Ella is just trying to fit in.
Director Statement
This was my way of explaining how it felt to be diagnosed and to fall within the spectrum of neurodiversity. The film shows through colours a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Ultimately, the film addresses in a colourful way things that can be deep and difficult to deal with. Like most people dealing with mental health issues, the pain is hidden, and sometimes what is portrayed is quite agreeable and disguised, everything can seem beautiful on the surface but has multiple layers underneath. For all I know, the film could be happening inside her head, so the viewer is welcome to embark on the cyclic nature of her experience, and see whether they can relate or not.
Bio
Joanna Mamede is an artist-filmmaker from Brazil based in the UK. Her work explores the tangibility of meaning through difference, multilingualism, and sometimes politics. Playing with visual and textual interferences, her films and installations fall between genres to reveal the spaces in between, and the structures that hold them.
Her films have been selected by festivals worldwide including Aesthetica Film Festival, Future Now Symposium, Gstaadfilm, Videobardo, LisbonRendezvous and Berlin Revolution. Her installations have been exhibited at the Tate Modern, Central Saint Martins, The Rich Mix, and Deptford X.
She became a Master of Research in Art: Moving Image at Central Saint Martins in 2019, where her research ‘Transbordo: The Fear of the Other Word’, analysed how women artists use text on screen to deconstruct oppressed language systems. She is on the Board of Trustees of Lux Moving Image, helps advocate for the Decolonising the Arts Curriculum at UAL, and is part of ICCG, Institution that manages for educational purposes Gilberto’s Chateaubriand’s collection, portraying the history of Brazilian contemporary art from 1915 to today.
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
